"Non leggo il libro, il quale non piace a mia madre."

[peter2108]

Does the Italian imply that my mother does not like the book, or that she does not like me not reading it? Or is it ambiguous like the translation?

[f.formica]

It means my mother doesn't like the book I'm reading; if she didn't like me reading it instead of "il quale" it would have been "il che" or "la qual cosa".

[peter2108]

So Sono caduto una distanza lunga, la qual cosa era cattivo (I fell a long way which was bad) because the relative pronoun refers to the whole event described in the antecedent.

[f.formica]

Yeah, but your example is a little off. Cadere is intransitive, so if you want to specify a length you should use 'per', but even then we usually use "da" specifying a height; when speaking about events, we don't use cattivo (we might sometimes use buono), and instead the adverbs bene/male; also, if you use "la qual cosa" (which feels more formal than "il che", same as "il quale" compared to "che") the adjective takes the gender of cosa. I would say "Sono caduto da molto in alto, il che è male" (I fell from a very high place, which is a bad thing).

[peter2108]

Thank you for this. I learned a lot from it and hope others will too!

Edit Actually in English we do say "He fell from a great height"